The avant-garde is dead. The post-modern is an undirected mix of random objects. Deconstructive art is too negative. Futurism is unfoundedly optimistic about technology. Conceptual art is a language stripped of meaning. New media is in the dark ages.

We hereby establish reconstructive art to reaffirm pure irrationality, the value of dreams, and the founding of a new surrealism in art. Dada of 1915 developed as a reaction to the atrocities of World War I. Reconstructive art is hereby founded with equal conviction, equal disgrace, equal abhorrence at the moral atrocities of greed and power found in capitalism. However, Dada, similar to deconstructive art today, eventually disbanded due to its insistence on provoking a response. Our goal is not to provoke, but to seek balance. Through Reconstructivism, like surrealism, we hope to transform and liberate the individual in art by calling upon the subconscious, pure imagination, and pure irrationality, and expressing these in new media.

We propose to rise above the formal elements of language and grammar, as defined by Conceptual and Structuralist Art, which reveal the grammar of art but whose meaning is rich, yet overly material. As I speak in language, my words are full of grammar and syntax, but my speech rises above these words. Art is no more about the formalities of language than poetry is about formalism. The medium is not the message, the message is the message. Similarly, new media is art in infancy. We intend to raise new media to the level of human meaning, where the paradox of the measurable and immeasurability constitute reality together. To give new media the tools which it desperately needs, but not dwell on those tools, so that it may speak to the imagination, as art should.

We uphold the value of traditional arts, their unique ability to allow each new work to be a personal discovery rather than a technical exercise, and imagine a future new media so flexible and rich in language that one can create ideas as easily as one speaks, paints, or sings. But we are also in no hurry, and write code in balance with our moral and social self-discovery expressed by our creative acts.

We, reconstructivists, believe that art is and should be about meaning at the human, psychological, and introspective level. Art is not science, and should not illustrate it. Technology and engineering are not art, as they do not consistently question the personal self. Art serves a specific, necessary, distinct social role. We seek to expose and enable the creativity, imagination and purpose present in every human being.

It is essential to understand that our idealism, our outlook, is not idealistic. We do not envision a future utopia of socialism. As world population increases, capitalism promotes the containment and isolation of the individual in the struggle for survival. No power has yet been found to overcome the basic issues of survival and the suffering it implies. Yet personal isolation need not be a factor. At the other side of our current struggle, lies yet another struggle. Our view of the future, toward the expressive, creative, freedom of the individual, is a direction focused on the present moment. It is an outlook, and goal, that the irrational, illogical, immeasurable creativity of the individual can continually overcome imposed structures, indefinitely.

Reconstructive art is humble. Capitalism consumes all art, even extreme and subversive arts which oppose it, by buying and selling. We are neither extreme nor subversive. We are imaginative, creative artists capable of acts of irrationality and seek to reconstruct the individual not as a supreme being, nor as an insect, but by simple steps of illogic freedom toward an unknown goal. Reconstructive art is a call to liberate deconstructivist art – we continue to question society, but we will not wallow in guilt, disgrace or negative judgement. We use a fish and a teacup to combat industry, a caterpillar and a triangle to respond to war. The world is a reality of which we are aware and conscious, while our own reality is unbounded and free. Where solutions to practical worldly problems are impossible, we propose a metamorphosis of the individual.

We think about and beyond the world. As reconstructed individuals, we seek to be humble, unstructured, creative, connected, distinctive human beings whose physical needs are small, whose workings are simple, whose friends are our fellow human beings, and whose world is a sustainable natural environment.